Because of the power and international status of English, and because of real or perceived pressures to &#8216;assimilate&#8217; persons from non-English speaking cultural backgrounds, educators in English-dominant countries are likely to have a primary focus on the academic achievement of learners based on monolingual (English) standards and benchmarks. &#8216;Success&#8217; in educational contexts is likely to reflect the common sense view &#8220;the more English, as early as possible, the better the outcome&#8221;, which, while intuitively logical, is not supported by the best available research on the acquisition of English by K-12 English language learners. In fact, the research of language acquisition scholars strongly suggests that monolingually-normed approaches to pedagogy and assessment with linguistically diverse student populations in North America are detrimental to their academic achievement.